No wonder, otherwise we wouldn't necessarily have have to see all those "gaah, I created the pretender with the mod (not) on, and now it gives a cheating error!" in CBM/Non-CBM and other games. Mods are only really checked for after a game starts. But good that Evil Dave can confirm this behaviour.
On larger games Ive gotten in the habit of copying the 2h files to another directory and running a false start, then checking to see if there are cheat messages. Much easier that way then having people do a turn then find out someone wants a rollback or will go AI in the first turn